Shred Yr Face 2: Eva Spence, Rolo Tomassi

Shred Yr Face 2 gets ever closer and this week Rock Sound has tapped up Rolo Tomassi vocalist Eva Spence to talk about the trials of doing things DIY. Check it out below...

You started as a very young, very DIY band; have you had a backlash from music snobs now you’re doing alright for yourselves?''When we first started we tried to keep things as DIY as possible, without sounding like we were people that were being that snobbish. We handmade all of our first releases and stuff, and we really liked to keep things very intimate, and we did do a lot of DIY shows. But it’s just sort of the progression of the band, I mean we would just constantly tour and constantly play and more people came to see us, and I guess we have sort of progressed onto a different level now than what we were once in.

Maybe we’ve not seen a lot of people that we used to play to, but I’m not sure whether that’s just us growing up, out of the style of music that we were doing or, whatever, I’m not really sure.''

You were working for a certain high street fashion retailer, and you’ve previously alluded to how you keep your ‘other life’ in the band secret; do you struggle to fit in? Does it affect the way you dress?''Well actually I had to cancel some shifts at work to tour, er, my boss phoned me up and she was like, ‘We’re going to have to have a serious word about your commitment to New Look’. So I actually think I’ve been fired! But it’s okay, ’cos I’ve got another job at a bar now, so that’s fine. But I guess it was sort of, I mean, the way that I look isn’t stereotypically what the other people who do kind of screaming music look like. I’m not a big tough guy and I don’t really wear masculine clothes. I’m not covered in tattoos or whatever, so it’s like, I don’t really look like I belong to the noises I make I suppose. But I don’t really think it changed me, being in the high street environment, because I was wearing exactly the same stuff I would be wearing anyway. I would say I looked much the same as I do in everyday life.''

So how much have you told your, well, former colleagues about the band?''When they asked me I’d just be like, ‘I’m a singer’. I wouldn’t go into what kind of music I did, because I guess the kind of people I worked with, no disrespect to them, because they are all really nice girls, but for the kind of job I worked in, in Barnsley, which is quite a reclusive place to everywhere else, they don’t really like anything out of the ordinary if you know what I mean? The people that worked there, I don’t think would have understood the kind of music that we play. The stuff that we write is just everywhere at the same time, I don’t think they’d have understood that; but it was sort of like a double-life thing, because they had no idea that we were in magazines and being played on the radio. None of them had any idea about that, so it was just like I was one of the really quiet girls at work, and that was sort of it, but yeah, I’m quite sad I’ve lost my job there. I need to phone them up tomorrow and talk about it to see if I can quit before they actually manage to fire me. It would look better on my CV to say I left my job because of other commitments than to put I was fired for having to cancel loads of shifts!''

Rolo Tomassi will be the supporting act for Fucked Up and The Bronx on the following Shred Yr Face 2 tourdates: